Emily Jacir

1972, Bethlehem, Palestine

Emily Jacir is one of the most intense and politically engaged voices in international contemporary art. Born in Bethlehem and raised between the Middle East and the United States, Jacir has developed a multidisciplinary practice spanning photography, installation, video and performance, addressing themes such as exile, identity, memory and freedom of movement with great clarity.
Her works are never just images: they are traces, testimonies, acts of poetic resistance. With a gaze that is both intimate and universal, Jacir gives visual form to erased histories, abandoned objects, interrupted journeys, building narratives in which geography and biography intertwine. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, she is today one of the most recognised artists on the contemporary art scene, known for her strong political and emotional weight.

Emily Jacir

Persistence, 2003 / 2009
Photographic print on paper, 76.5×67.5 cm

Persistence shows an abandoned bus, eaten away by rust, in the middle of an arid, silent landscape. The vehicle, an empty skeleton of a bygone time, is not merely an object but a witness: to Palestinian collective memory, to forced migrations, to suspended time and loss. Jacir does not intervene in the scene - she captures it as it is, letting reality speak for itself, with all its rawness and poetry.
The title - Persistence - is essential. Despite the destruction, something endures: an echo of what once was, an image that refuses to fade, a presence that questions whoever looks at it. It is a work about the power of survival, but also about absence, displacement, the impossibility of turning back. Jacir turns photography into a field of active memory, in which every element - even a wreck - has a voice, a history, a dignity.